Here’s a quick introduction to my first gun – a Mosin Nagant 91/30. Yes, I am crazy. I would NOT recommend a Mosin as a first gun, mainly because it kicks like nobody’s business. My Mosin kicks more than my 12-gauge. But, I really enjoy shooting it despite all the kick.
Mosin Nagant 91/30 and accessories
I got it on sale at Gander Mountain for $100. The rifle comes with the sling, oil container, cleaning pouch and kit, bayonet (yes, bayonet), and two ammo pouches. I bought a Limbsaver butt pad and an ammo sock, along with the ammo belt separately.
Mosin 'head cracker' Butt Plate
A little history on the Mosin (you can get all of this and more on 7.62x54r.net). The rifle was designed in 1891 by Sergei Ivanovich Mosin and Leon Nagant, and was still in use by some snipers in the Korean War, and is occasionally STILL being used in Iraq and Afghanistan today! This makes it the longest-serving battle rifle in history. And for good reason – as a fellow Mosin enthusiast and friend of mine is fond of saying, the Mosin was designed to be operated, cleaned, and fixed by illiterate Russian peasants, with almost no tools. It’s an extremely simple, but deadly weapon.
The Mosin is one of only a few firearms to shoot 7.62x54r ammunition (the SKS and a couple of lesser-known guns use it as well) (EDIT: the SKS shoots AK rounds. Thanks Anders for catching that mistake!). When designing the AK-47 (the Mosin’s replacement as the standard issue military rifle), there’s a reason why they opted for the
smaller 7.62×39 round: the Mosin round is VERY heavy-duty, and is not pleasant to shoot, especially in only a T-shirt! To make matters worse, the end of the Mosin’s stock is fitted with a steel ‘head cracker’ strap for use in close combat. The first time I shot my Mosin, my shoulder was black and blue for a week afterward.
As I mentioned before, the Mosin is very easy to disassemble and clean – and you better clean it often if you shoot military surplus rounds, as they are slightly corrosive, and can destroy your barrel if not cleaned properly! The rifle has a cleaning rod that screws into the stock and sits right under the barrel, and each gun comes with (from left top, clockwise in the picture) a barrel guard, t-handle nut, t-handle, cleaning jag, oil/cleaning solution container, pouch and screwdriver/bolt clearance checker/bayonet remover. It takes me about 5 minutes to field strip my Mosin, and about 10 minutes to clean and lubricate it.
Mosin Rounds - left to right, soft point, surplus corrosive, jacketed.
You can get several different kinds of ammo for the Mosin. The cheapest and easiest to find is military surplus full metal jacket rounds. Some stores sell them in packs of 20; others will sell you a ‘spam can’ full of 440 rounds, in 20-rd packs. You can also get a non-corrosive full jacketed round, and a soft-point round. I’ve never seen them, but internet legend has it that you can even find 7.62x54r tracer rounds if you look hard enough.
The Mosin holds 5 rounds at a time, and can either be loaded manually (take a bullet, put it in, put another on top of it, etc., or with a ‘stripper clip’. The stripper clip allows you to load 5 rounds just by pushing down on the top round, although in practice, it takes a little bit or art to do.
I have modified the bolt on my Mosin, so the knob is turned back and down, as opposed to the straight bolt on a stock Mosin. This modification, along with drilling and tapping the receiver for a scope mount are the only two differences between a standard-issue battle Mosin and a sniper Mosin. Will I eventually install a scope on my rifle?
Mosin Ammo in Stripper Clip
That is about a $500 question, and between that price tag and the fact that this is a $100 gun, I probably never will. But someday, I may change my mind…
And yes, the bolt modification will come in another future post 
If you are interested in Mosins, check out 7.62x54r.net as I mentioned before (this site has more about Mosins than you ever wanted to know), orcheck out a few videos a friend of mine made about them:
And the obligatory firearm photo gallery:
Just wanted to make the comment regarding your photo of different 7.62/54r rounds. All 7.62/54r rounds use corrosive primers, not just the surplus ammo.
SKS fires the 7.62/39. Same as the AK. I have shot an SKS quite a bit and IMO it has a more violent recoil than the Nagant. .223 is smooth as silk btw.
whoops. Well, let this be fair warning to readers that I am not an expert on firearms…so now I had better get my facts straight. Looks like the 54r is used in the Mosin, Dragunov, a couple of Russian-contracted Winchester Model 1895s (!), SVT-40, and PK machine gun, among several others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9754mmR). The reason for the mistake was actually that I have also shot an SKS, and was handed a stripper clip full of rounds to load (right after shooting my Mosin), and the rounds seemed the same size. Thanks for catching that, Anders!
Interesting that you didn’t like the recoil on the SKS – I didn’t think the recoil was all that bad. In fact, if I had the extra cash lying around, I wouldn’t mind owning one. Fact on the .223 as well. I shot Brendon’s AR and was bracing for Mosin- or shotgun-like kick. It felt more like a pellet gun. Made me kind of feel silly…
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